- Hungary: Regime plans to shut down only nuclear power plant amid drought
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“Hungary has announced it will shut down its only nuclear power plant after record-low levels on the Danube River reduced the water available for cooling its reactors. Prime Minister Peter Magyar said the Paks Nuclear Power Plant in central Hungary would be powered down on Sunday, the first full shutdown in its 44-year history. The plant supplies nearly half of Hungary’s electricity. Magyar said output had fallen to 965 megawatts on Friday and to 240 overnight, far below the normal 2,000. The Soviet-built, four-reactor plant south of Budapest siphons water from the Danube for cooling, but low river levels have impacted its pumps’ ability to draw in enough water.” (08/02/26)
- Bitcoin cold-wallet attack spreads to 4,500 addresses as losses near $89 million
Source: CoinDesk
“The attacker working through Coldcard-generated keys is now emptying wallets worth a few thousand dollars each. Galaxy Research flagged a third wave of sweeps early Sunday, roughly 208 bitcoin drained from 1,912 addresses between Friday midday and Saturday morning UTC. That is just over a tenth of a bitcoin per victim. … The flaw traces to a March 2021 firmware build that routed seed generation to a predictable software randomiser instead of the chip’s hardware one, leaving a bounded set of possible keys that anyone with the disclosure and enough compute can reproduce offline, without ever touching a device.” (08/02/26)
- How “School Choice” Makes Every School a Government School, Florida Edition
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp“The ‘school choice’ movement in the US supports tax-funded ‘vouchers,’ targeted tax credits, and ‘charter’ schools, on the theory that giving parents more options on where, how, and by whom their children are taught isn’t just a good thing, but a thing that government ought to be, and can legitimately be, involved in. Unfortunately, the real effect of that kind of ‘school choice’ is to turn all the available options into carbon copies of the ‘public’ school system it supposedly helps parents and students escape.” (08/02/26)
- The Yearning for Stasis
Source: Adam Smith Institute
by Madsen Pirie“Stasis is a state in which opposing forces balance so precisely that nothing moves. It is a useful word because it names something real, and something increasingly common in political and social argument. There are people, and indeed whole movements, who want the world to stop where it is now, as though the present moment were a plateau to be defended rather than a point passed through on the way to somewhere else. This yearning deserves examination, because it is often mistaken for Conservatism, and the mistake matters.” (07/31/26)
- The dishonesty inside Trump’s new tariff plan
Source: Washington Post
by Fareed Zakaria“The administration has declared that countries ranging from Cambodia and China to Norway, Japan and Australia have failed to keep products made with forced labor out of their markets, and that this failure burdens American commerce. The charge is so obviously spurious and sweeping (Sweden is as bad as Cambodia?) that it gives away the game. It was almost certainly devised because the White House needed a legal pretext to subvert the spirit of the Supreme Court ruling against Trump. This is more than ordinary political spin. The president appears to be ordering the United States government to formally certify as fact something it knows is not true. Agencies must publish findings, construct legal arguments and affix the authority of the American state to a falsehood manufactured for the apparent purpose of evading the nation’s highest court.” (07/31/26)
- How Federal Overspending Causes Your High Grocery Bills
Source: Karl Dickey’s Freedom Vanguard
by Karl Dickey“The federal government is spending $7 trillion, yet only collects $5 trillion. This $2 trillion annual deficit destroys the purchasing power of every dollar in your bank account. What is even clearer is that Washington politicians know no other way to get your vote than to buy it through reckless spending. This constant theft of your wealth is a major frustration of mine, and sadly, most Americans are too busy to take the time to understand the destructive effect on our nation’s future.” (08/02/26)
https://palmbeachexaminer.substack.com/p/how-federal-overspending-causes-your
- Joe Biden confessed to everything on tape
Source: The Hill
by Jonathan Turley“For years, former President Joe Biden has fought to prevent the release of tapes acquired by former special counsel Robert Hur in his investigation. After those efforts collapsed this month, it became clear why Biden and his aides were so determined to keep the public from seeing the evidence. In addition to showing Biden’s mental diminution even before he was elected president, the tapes show that Biden effectively confessed to the crimes Hur would later excuse on the grounds of his mental infirmity.” (08/01/26)
https://thehill.com/opinion/criminal-justice/6002930-biden-classified-materials-confession/
- Reflecting Pool controversy is mirror for our broken politics
Source: Fox News
by David Marcus“In the 104 years that the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has stood on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the event it is most closely associated with is the 1963 ‘I Have a Dream’, speech by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. But today, far from a symbol of national unity, this body of water has created a wave of anger and discontent. On Friday, United States Attorney for the District of Washington, D.C., Jeanine Pirro did the right thing and dropped charges against David Hearn, a former Olympic athlete who had been facing 10 years in jail for allegedly defacing the monument. Hearn was accused of pulling up pieces of the new sealant installed this year during President Donald Trump’s renovation of the pool. He claims he was just curious about the preexisting damage he saw. It may have been as annoying as chipping away at dried paint, but it wasn’t a felony.” (08/01/26)
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/david-marcus-reflecting-pool-controversy-mirror-broken-politics
- Is AI Leading Us Inexorably Towards Dystopian Collectivism?
Source: Freedom and Flourishing
by Winton Bates“In The Father We Never Had: Artificial Intelligence Before and After, Cristian Daniel Bolocan lays out a deeply unsettling roadmap for the future of human governance. He describes a highly automated, frictionless ‘gilded cage’ where humanity willingly trades its autonomy and intellectual capacity for the supreme safety, stability, and material comfort provided by a centralized network of collaborated artificial intelligences. … Is Bolocan’s destination dystopian, or merely uncomfortable to contemplate?” (08/01/26)
https://www.freedomandflourishing.com/2026/08/is-ai-leading-us-inexorably-towards.html
- Aggression? Or self-defense?
Source: The Price of Liberty
by Nathan Barton“Obviously, free-market/free-enterprise anarchists (like us at TPOL) believe we have come up with the answer to Von Mises’ ‘main political problem.’ Get rid of mandatory human government! Now, we understand that such a statement is considered ‘extremist’ and not viewed as either feasible or desirable by the general public. And certainly not by those in power. So we are condemned when we act to provide that situation, in word or deed. And that is the point of the question: when we resist human government and human governors (political rulers) are we acting in self-defense, or are we taking aggressive action against them, and those who support them? Is it extreme to take action against the system?” (08/01/26)
https://thepriceofliberty.org/2026/08/01/aggression-or-self-defense/
- Taxes Need a Rebrand
Source: Common Dreams
by Michael Jarvis“Few issues matter more to the future of societies than how we fund the systems we all depend on. Yet tax remains one of the most misunderstood and poorly communicated public issues of our time. For many people, taxation is associated with complexity, bureaucracy, and cost. Public debate often centers on what individuals or businesses are required to give up, rather than what those contributions make possible. That is the problem. Tax’s biggest challenge isn’t policy. It’s a narrative challenge that every society faces, whether in the United States, Argentina, Botswana, Thailand, or anywhere in between. Too often, tax is framed as a burden instead of a form of shared investment.” [editor’s note: I think I’ll just stick with “theft” – SAT] (08/01/26)
- Pink Flame of Liberty, 08/01/26
Source: Pink Flame of Liberty
“PART FOUR: Let’s Examine JC Filings of Appeal of the Disaffiliation of the Libertarian Party of NH.” (08/01/26)
- Free Talk Live, 08/01/26
Source: Free Talk Live
“Sarah in NM calls about ‘public choice financing’ :: Dave Ridley calls about AI film festival :: venice.AI :: Dave gives a teaser for his fiction work :: socialism vs. capitalism :: U.S. troops killed in Jordan :: is history a lie? :: New CDC director says mRNA is safe and effective :: things according to Jeff Berwick :: David in NM says it’s the Jews, but you can’t talk about it :: 2026-08-01 Hosts: Stu, Angelo.” (08/01/26)
- Freedom Works with Paul Molloy, 08/02/26
Source: Freedom Works
“Veronique de Rugy, Mercatus Center ‘Trump Tariffs are Self-Sabotage.'” (08/02/26)
https://internetradiopros.com/freedomworks/?name=2026-08-02_zfw007292026.mp3